Quote:
Originally Posted by whats77inaname
Based on previous race attendance and the ability to survey the track, I settled on the hairpin (Turn 11, between 11E and 11W). It met all the criteria and offered a parking lot that is a short walk to our seats. You can see the cars rocketing down from T10, and disappearing down to T12. Lots of action in there, too (passing). In July, COTA ran a special via Ticketmaster for GA and parking, but they were trying to put you in lot F (you couldn't selet your parking lot). However, I called COTA and was able to get the GA special and parking lot selection (your lot is printed on your pass). We got there @ 930, brought lawn chairs and a couple blankets and were set. The view was excellent! At the end of the race when Vettel did his burnout? He did it in on the runoff area directly in front of us, so we had a front row view. We had 5 mins of traffic, and were moving freely after that. This will be our plan going forward for all race events. Hope all of this helps.
The only thing that kinda sucked was the weather was cool (50-60 degrees) and cloudy in the morning, then broke out to sunny and 90+ degrees (100 degrees track side, which we were). Unfortunately, our chairs didn't have umbrellas, but that will be remedied for the 2014 race  |
Thats funny, because I was also at GA Turn 11 (due to a friends recommendation that its not worth it to pay for grandstand seats) and I wasn't very happy with it. Most of the problem was that we weren't well prepared. Like you said, it started as a nice cool day, and then turned into a scorcher. We were wearing warm clothes, couldn't find any shade, and didn't have sunscreen. We were burning up out there. I got one of the worst sunburns of my life.
We also didn't bring chairs, because the GA lawns looked like they had a steep slope... but once we got there we realized that they weren't as steep as they looked, and because everyone else had chairs we couldn't see over them when we were sitting on the ground.
To top it off, we parked in the park and ride lot because we assumed the busses would drop us off near the track. Boy were we wrong! they drop you off at the bottom of the hill, so you have to hike all the way up the hill to the track. Once there, we were told there would be trolleys, but they were nowhere to be found so we had to hike all the way across the track to turn 11.
In the end we couldn't see much of the race, were sunburned and covered in sweat, probably walked over 3 miles, and were not happy.
Ohh, and the traffic sucked donkey balls.
If I go back again, it will be for something less popular so I can get reasonably priced tickets, not have to deal with the crowds, and actually enjoy the racing.